Thursday, May 9, 2013

From Humans to Flies


In this article, a new method for testing was discussed. For years, tests would be done on a model before moving onto humans. Now, however, Paul Shaw has decided to do it the other way around.

His research is about how to tell if someone is sleep deprived, and since the tests would have been too expensive at the time to carry out with human subjects, he decided that it would be just as efficient to fins a similar marker in flies. Most of the results didn’t match up, but then they found ITGA5, which hadn’t been included in the first tests of humans. Because of this, they once again tested human saliva and found that the gene’s activity levels increased in subjects that were sleep deprived.

Shaw calls this method of going back and forth between human and model “cross-translational research.”

NOS themes

1. Science is based on evidence

2. Role of motivation and curiosity

3. Science is subject to debate and tentative

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